Yes, that comment about North Korea was foolish. Korean culture does prevail there but they are suffering so bad that it's not worth keeping the culture for. They didn't exactly adopt Soviet culture, just the idea of Communism.

Live in Laos? Are you kidding me? Of course I want to live in Laos..I don't see how that's plausible though, because there aren't any good jobs there. Honestly, one of my biggest dreams is to be able to live in Laos, but given the Lao economy, I don't see how I can support a family while living in Laos. If you have any suggestions for me I am totally open man...I've got no idea. I need to be able to have a career, you know, in case I get sick or my wife gets sick and someone needs expensive treatment. The only way I can think to make money in Laos is working online or working in Thailand or America and commuting to visit her.

Yeah, I know most Lao people are still Lao, when I stayed in Laos it was mostly in the countryside, but the problem was transportation. I didn't have my own motorbike so I just rented them and I didn't want to spend a lot of money renting for days at a time, so I didn't get to explore the most remote villages out there.

TexasCowboy, how do you manage transportation? I usually just paid the locals to give me rides or rented motorbikes, anyways I got ripped off a couple times from the locals giving me rides and I spent more money than I should have. I plan to buy my own motorbike and take a self directed tour of the entire country..I wouldn't mind going to Yunnan province in China also..maybe Vietnam, Cambodia and Burma too.

Work online, work as a teacher in China or Korea for six months out of the year and then live in Laos for six months. Cut your costs by living on farm and eating what you yourself have grown. My goal is to save $200,000 by the time I am 32-34. At that point, I can open up a guesthouse, buy some farmland and a truck. Then maybe six months out of the year go to work abroad.

Your command of English is quite good and if your Lao is anywhere near as good as your English then you can find work as a translator and probably make around 18-20,000 USD a year once you've established yourself. You'd have to live in Vientiane which is not really all that bad.

My Lao is not nearly as good as my English. My spoken Lao is decent but I am barely literate and it is very difficult for me to read. I am working on that and plan to devote at least an hour a day for the next few years. If I could find work as a translator, I'd jump at the opportunity if I could make more than $900USD/month.

Well, I can read both Thai and Lao very easily. They are practically the same alphabet, except Lao government made Lao phonetic. My English vocabulary is bigger than my Thai or Lao vocabulary, but I've never had any issues expressing ideas in Lao or Thai. I could become a translator fairly easily I figure. Anyways, I have some friends in Laos who do tour guides around Laos and they've invited me to work, but I'm not certain that the money is good.

I guess I could help you read Lao in my spare time. You help me, I help you. I'm sure you could be useful to me someday. That is, if you want.

Your profile says you are 25. Bro, if you can already speak good Thai and Lao and are in the process of learning Khmer, you could probably get into linguistics and turn that into a career. You are still young. I still have a silly dream of going back to the US to study linguistics myself. Almost nobody has a good command of Lao, Thai, and English. Just go to Laos and get into teaching, accept that yes, you will only make $100-300 a month. Work and save a few thousand in the bank as a backup plan while you're in the states. If you are sociable and amiable then you could probably get tips and make more than $300/month working as a tour guide. If you start to learn minority languages then you can probably get a scholarship or funding from a university and start publishing scholarly papers. If you are 100% falang like me you can go to the countryside and provide a few hours of language instruction a week in exchange for food and shelter. Even if you are the product of miscegenation, most Lao will be open-minded and tolerable to you and will still respect your English skils. The possibilities in Lao PDR for a person who is truly passionate about anthropology are nearly limitless. Or go to Xishuangbanna, PRC and teach English and start studying the Dai minority language and Chinese.

Really I wish I had your experiences growing up as a child. Living in the United States for 20 years and never having taken language study seriously before going to Asia, it is now difficult and time consuming to pick up these languages. I'd probably have to devote a full two years solely to learning Lao before I could write well in the language. I have acquired truly nauseating habits during my upbringing because suburban American life is so superficial and boring. The US is only 250 years old and most of the so-called culture is actually a form of corrupted culture borrowed from an immigrant group or it is a product peddled and promoted by soulless greedheads whose motivations are money, power, and control.

Check out SEAlang.net. If anything else, it will give you a lifelong hobby that is relatively inexpensive and enormously rewarding. For the past few days I've dedicated most of my free time to studying linguistics, Lao grammar in particular. Check out some articles by Nick Enfield. The man is truly an inspiration and I have a lot of respect for his work.

As a matter of fact, I used SEAlang to teach myself how to read certain languages. I know where you can get an MA in linguistics in Southeast Asia, no need to go back to the USA bro. It is an accredited program taught in English. If you are interested then drop me a PM as I prefer not to reveal too much publicly, to protect my identity. Yes, I was on my way to learning a few minority languages, but I made some hilarious f--- ups and embarassed myself in a couple villages, no worries though, there are thousands of villages still. Again, drop me a PM and we shall talk.

Learning languages should not be too hard if you try. A word will have a definition. It's as simple as x=y. This symbol=this sound, this combination of sounds=this meaning.

I guess it's easier said than done, but if you have ever taken advanced math or engineering courses you will know that language is a breeze compared to these.

I haven't taken advanced engineering or mathematics courses but I know many mathematicians and engineers who have spent years living abroad and cannot speak a word of the local language or any language other than English. I take your point though. It is easy to pick up languages; it just requires persistence and lots of time.

I don't know how you could crappity smack up in the villages unless you were yelling or acting belligerent towards the inhabitants. I have spent a lot of time in villages all over the south of Champasak and generally people are very hospitable and will provide the necessities of life for free. A foreigner could probably live for free in Laos and walk from village to village and live there for a few weeks before moving on to the next village.

Your point about words having a concrete definition is incorrect. Many concepts in English have only incongruous parallels in Lao. A good example would be "ພູ" which phrasebooks and dictionaries translate as mountain or hill. In fact, based on my own experience and the observation and writings of linguist Nick Enfield, "ພູ" refers more generally to mountainous or hilly terrain. In other words, there is no word or concept in Lao for a mountain as a thing itself. There are any number of examples. Even terms for basic posture and emotions are not entirely equivalent between Lao and English.

Well, I didn't mean word for word. I didn't mean that (Lao word)=(English Word). x=y could mean a lot of things. What I meant was, (Lao Word)=(X concept, Y Concept). Sure some words can have multiple meanings, but there are no variables. Each word represents one or more concepts.

Usually each word just represents one concept, though some may represent 2 or more depending on how they are used. All you have to do to learn a language is attach that word to the concepts and you are done. There are no/few variables in language learning. That is what I meant, not that any language translates directly into another, you mistook my meaning.

Anyways, no I have never acted belligerently towards the locals in Laos but I did make a silly blunder that was embarrassing to me and I'm not banned from any village in Laos but I am too ashamed to go back to one because of something stupid I did, though it did not cause any harm to be honest.

Anyways, like I have said, I live in a western country but I have Lao heritage. Another person of Lao descent I know, also speaks Lao but not as fluently as I, went to Laos and was behaving badly. All the Lao kids who grew up in Western countries that I know have bad manners and try to emulate the Black gang culture. This guy punched out a couple Lao guys in bars and was about to get arrested but luckily he had a friend with connections.

About the word ພູ, in Thai it's called พูเขา and it definitely refers to a single mountain and it even has a classifier, ลูก.

I read through it a bit, and I understand that. Maybe ພູ alone means a hilly terrain, but I know for sure that ພູດອຍ means mountain.

For example, the Northern Thai Kam Muang language also uses the word "Doi" to refer to mountains. Ever heard of Doi Inthanon? Doi Suthep? They're both in Chiang Mai. It's the same in the Lao language. Northern Thai is actually similar to Lao in some ways, but it's very different in others. Northern Thai, Tai Lue and Shan share a lot of vocabulary.

Have you ever heard of the word ໂນນ or ເນີນ? That means hill in Lao and Thai. What I'm going by is the fact that I speak Lao every day to my family and I have spoken to a lot of Lao people. The Lao script, like Thai, Khmer, Burmese and Hindi, is an abugida (it's technically not an alphabet), which is a system of writing where vowels don't exist alone without consonants and must always attack to a consonant. so it's very easy to learn. At least it was for me. I find languages that use alphabets to be more difficult, like English for example. The only thing with abugidas is that you have to learn new symbols, and that's about it. If you know one abugida then you can learn another abugida easily..

Anyways, I never really analyzed Lao linguistically because I speak it every day, kind of how an English person never analyzes the English language unless he's into linguistics or whatever.